57. Massacre of Glencoe.—By the day named the clans had all come in, except MacIan, chief of a tribe of MacDonalds, who lived in Glencoe, a wild mountain valley in the northwestern corner of Argyleshire. On the last day, December 31, MacIan and his principal clansmen went to Fort William to take the oaths, but found that there was no one there who had authority to administer them. There was no magistrate nearer than Inverary, and, as the ground was deeply covered with snow, it was some days before MacIan got there. But the sheriff, in consideration of his goodwill and of the delay that he had met with, administered the oaths, (January 6,) and sent an account of the whole affair to the Privy Council at Edinburgh. Unfortunately for Glencoe, Breadalbane was his bitter personal enemy, and along with Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, he determined on his destruction. An order for the extirpation of the whole tribe was drawn up and presented to William, who signed it, and it was carried out with cold-blooded treachery. A party of soldiers, under the command of Campbell of Glenlyon, appeared in the Glen. They gave out that they came as friends, and as such they were kindly welcomed, and shared the hospitality of the MacDonalds for a fortnight. Without any warning they turned on their hosts, and before dawn of a winter's morning slew nearly all the dwellers in the valley, old and young together, February 13, 1691. They then burnt the houses, and drove off the cattle, so that nothing was left for the few wretched beings who had escaped death but to perish miserably of cold and hunger. Whether William knew the whole state of the case or not when he signed the warrant is not certain, but he did not punish those who had dared to commit this wholesale murder in his name. And though four years after, when a stir was made about it, he did grant a commission to the Privy Council to inquire into the matter, he did not bring to judgment the Master of Stair, who was very clearly pointed out as the guilty person.
58. Darien Scheme.—Just at this time the public attention was taken up with a scheme for founding a new colony on the Isthmus of Darien, and people's minds were so full of it that nothing else was thought of. It was got up by William Paterson, who is to be remembered as the originator of the Bank of England. He fancied that he had found, what Columbus and the other navigators of his day had sought in vain, a short cut to the Indies. His plan was to plant a colony on the isthmus which unites North and South America, and to make it the route by which the merchandise of the East should be brought to Europe, thereby shortening the long sea-voyage. He drew glowing pictures of the untold wealth that would thus fall to the lot of those who were clear-sighted enough to join in the venture. A charter was granted to the new Company, which gave them a monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa, and America for a term of thirty-one years, with leave to import all goods duty free, except foreign sugar and tobacco. Never had project been so popular. Every one was anxious to take shares. Half the capital of Scotland was invested in it, and poor and rich alike, deceived by Paterson's lying stories of the healthiness and fertility of the soil and climate, were eager to hasten to the new colony. A few vessels were bought at Hamburg and Amsterdam. In these twelve hundred emigrants set sail on the 25th July, 1698, and arrived safely on the shore of the Gulf of Darien. They named the settlement which they founded there New Caledonia, and built a town and a fort, to which they gave the names of New Edinburgh and St. Andrews. But, to set up such a trading market with any hopes of success, they ought to have had the good will and help of the great trading countries of Europe. Instead of this, England and Holland were much opposed to the scheme, as being an interference with their trading rights. The East India Company looked on the bringing in of Eastern merchandise to Scotland as an infringement of their privileges. Spain too claimed the Isthmus as her own, and seized one of the Scottish ships; while the Governor of the English colonies in North America refused to let them have supplies. In addition to these difficulties from without, the climate was wretchedly unhealthy. Disease quickly thinned their ranks, till at last the miserable remnant whom it spared were glad to flee from almost certain death. They deserted the new settlement, and set sail for New York. Meanwhile such glowing reports of the success of the venture had been spread abroad at home, that a second body of thirteen hundred emigrants, ignorant of the fate of those who had gone before them, set sail in August of the next year. They found the colony deserted, and the colonists gone. They themselves fared no better than the first settlers, and were in a few months driven out by the Spaniards. The Scottish people were deeply mortified and much enraged by the failure of this scheme. They blamed William for all the disasters of the colonists, because he had done nothing to help them, nor to prevent the interference of Spain. The Charter had been granted by the Government of Scotland without the King's knowledge when he was in Holland; and though he could not recall it, it would have been unjust to his English subjects to show any favour to a scheme which, had it succeeded, might have proved the ruin of their East Indian trade. So much bad feeling arose out of this unfortunate affair between the two nations, that it was plain that if there was not a closer union between them there would be a breach before long.
59. William's Death.—Just as the project of an Union was about to be considered in the English Parliament, William died, March 8, 1702. Since the death of Mary, in 1690, he had reigned alone. Both crowns now passed to Anne, the younger daughter of James VII.
60. Education Act.—It was in this reign that the system of national education which has made the Scotch, as a people, so intelligent and well-informed, was re-cast. An Act was passed, in 1696, by which every parish was required to provide a suitable schoolhouse, and to pay a properly qualified schoolmaster for the instruction of the children of the parish.
61. Anne, 1702-1714. Act of Security.— James VII. had died in France a few months before his nephew, and his son had been proclaimed there as James VIII. This made the Whigs anxious to have an Act passed in Scotland similar to the English Act of Settlement. By this Act the Parliament of England had settled that, if Anne died without heirs, the crown should pass to the nearest Protestant heir, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, grand-daughter of James the Sixth, or to her descendants. But the Estates still felt injured and angry about the late differences with England, and passed an Act of Security, which made express conditions that the same person should not succeed to the throne of both kingdoms, unless, during Queen Anne's reign, measures had been taken for securing the honour and independence of the Scottish nation against English influence. The right of declaring war against England at any time was to remain with the Scottish Parliament.
62. Trial and Death of Captain Green.—Just at this time an event happened which tended to increase the bad feeling between the two countries. An English ship, the Worcester, was driven by stress of weather into the Firth of Forth. It was seized by the Scots, because the East India Company had some time before detained a Scotch ship. From the talk of some of the crew it was suspected that they had murdered the captain and crew of one of the Darien vessels which was missing. On this charge Captain Green of the Worcester, his mate and crew, were brought to trial before the High Court of Admiralty. On the evidence of a black slave they were found guilty and condemned, and Green, his mate, and one of the crew were hanged. It was afterwards found out that the crime for which they had suffered had never been committed. The missing ship had gone ashore on the island of Madagascar, where Drummond, the captain, was then living. Whatever wrongs the Scots had suffered, the English had now, after this unlawful deed, a very reasonable cause of complaint against them.
63. The Union.—It was clear that, if the two kingdoms were to go on together in peace, it could only be by joining their Parliaments and their commercial interests into one. Commissioners from both sides were appointed to consider the best way of effecting this union. Godolphin, the Treasurer of England, and the Duke of Queensberry, the Royal Commissioner in Scotland, were its chief promoters. The Commissioners drew up a Treaty of Union, which was approved by the Parliaments of both countries. By the Articles of Union the succession to both crowns was settled in the Protestant heirs of Sophia; and each country was secured in the possession of her national Church as then established. Scotland was to send sixteen Representative Peers, elected from the whole body of Peers, and forty-five members from the Commons, to the Parliament at Westminster, henceforth to be called the Parliament of Great Britain. It was further settled that one seal, with the arms of both kingdoms quartered upon it, should serve for both countries, that both should be subject to the same Excise duties and Customs, and should have the same privileges of trade. The same coins, weights, and measures were to be used throughout the island. The law-courts of Scotland, the Court of Justiciary and the Court of Session, were to remain unchanged, only there was now a right of appeal from the Court of Session, which had hitherto been supreme in all civil cases, to the House of Lords. In addition to the twenty-five Articles of Union, a special Act was passed for securing the liberty of the Church of Scotland as it then stood in all time coming, and declaring that the Presbyterian should be the only Church government in Scotland. The first Parliament of Great Britain met October 23, 1707.
64. Results of the Union.—Twice before this time the Legislature of the two kingdoms had been thus joined together into one, under Edward I. and under Cromwell. But these two unions, each the result of conquest, had lasted but a little while. This Union was destined to be more enduring, and to lead to increased prosperity in both kingdoms. For Scotland it was the beginning of quite a new state of things. Hitherto the struggle for national life had left her no leisure for internal development, and at the time of the Union she was without manufactures, shipping, or commerce. With the end of her independent nationality a new social life began, and a spirit of industry and enterprise was awakened, which has since raised her people to their present eminence in trade, manufactures, and agriculture. The Union struck the last blow at the power of the Scottish nobles. They were not placed by any means on the same level with the Peers of the sister kingdom. It brought to the Commons, who during this period had been much despised and oppressed, an increase in dignity and independence, by admitting them to a share in the liberty and privileges which the Commons of England had won for themselves with the sword. But what did even more for the prosperity of Scotland was the removal of all restrictions on her trade, which was now placed on the same footing as that of the larger kingdom. For half a century after the union of the crowns she had enjoyed free trade with England and her colonies; but that was brought to an end by the Navigation Act, passed soon after the Restoration, which forbade the importing of any foreign goods into England except in English vessels, and which was, as the Scots justly complained, the ruin of their rising commerce.
65. Literature and Art.—Between the union of the Crowns and the union of the Parliaments there was but little advance in literature or art. This was in great part owing to the fact that, just when all other nations had taken to writing in their own tongues in place of Latin, the Scottish Court migrated to London. There the Northumbrian English, which was the common speech of the Lowlands of Scotland, was despised as a provincial dialect, in which no educated man would write if he wished his writings to be read. During this period, the talent that was to be found in the country was enlisted in the religious struggle, which occupied all men's minds, and it produced many divines eminent for eloquence and learning. The literature of the times was, like the fighting, the tyranny, and the persecutions, chiefly of a religious character. There were many men of learning and talent, renowned either for their writings or from their eloquence, to be found among the leaders of the different sects. Among the Presbyterians the most eminent were John Welch, the son-in-law of Knox; Alexander Henderson; Guthrie, the martyr of the Remonstrants, and George Gillespie, who, from his gift for argument, was called the "Hammer of the Malignants." The Episcopal Church could boast of some scholarly divines, such as John and Patrick Forbes, and Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow. Of poets there were but few; none who could bear comparison with those of an earlier time. Drummond of Hawthornden is chief among them, but his genius is obscured by an imitation of the dialect and style then prevalent in England. Many of the beautiful ballads and songs of which Scotland may justly be proud, must have been composed about this time, but the authors are unknown. Unknown also, or forgotten, are the musicians to whom Scotland owes the wild, sweet strains to which those songs were sung, those pathetic melodies which make the national music so peculiar and characteristic in its exquisite beauty. The oldest collection of these airs is in a manuscript which seems to date from the sixteenth century. To George Jameson, the earliest Scottish painter of note, we owe the life-like portraits of the heroes of these times. He was born at Aberdeen and in 1620 he settled in his native town as a portrait-painter. But the spirit of the Covenant was opposed to art. Though it inspired to heroic deeds, there were no songs made about them. Architecture fared even worse than poetry, for while churches, the work of former ages, were pulled down, any new ones that were put up were as ugly and tasteless as it was possible to make them. Napier of Merchiston, a zealous reformer, the writer of an Explanation of the Apocalypse, is known in the world of science as the inventor of Logarithms, a clever and easy way of shortening difficult numerical calculations.
66. Summary.—The union of the crowns of England and Scotland put a stop to the constant skirmishing on the Border and to the devastating inroads which had for centuries embittered the two countries against one another. It might therefore have been expected that Scotland, during the century which passed between the union of the Crowns and the union of the Parliaments, would have made great social advances. This was prevented by the ceaseless party strife which disgraced the century, and made this period one of the most disastrous and oppressive to the people in the whole history of the nation. James the Sixth had found the strict discipline and constant interference of the ministers so irksome, and the turbulent independence of his nobles so little to his mind, that he was delighted to escape from both to the richer kingdom to which his good fortune called him. The severe training of his childhood had made him hate the Presbyterian polity with all his heart. As soon as he had the power, he changed the government of the Church, and introduced various observances which were hateful to the people. His son Charles went a step further, and by his attempt to substitute an English for a Scottish Liturgy, drove the people to revolt. The war thus begun, by an effort to force on the hereditary kingdom of his race the customs of the larger kingdom which his father had acquired, ended in his losing both. Scotland enjoyed a short gleam of prosperity from the conquest of Cromwell till his death. Under the next Stewart, Charles the Second, the King to whom she had always been loyal, the government was entrusted to a council, which exercised a cold-blooded tyranny against which the people had no redress. This reign of terror only rooted their religious prejudices the more firmly in their minds. When the tyrant James was deposed, the reaction of popular feeling fell heavily on the clergy of the Established Church, who individually were no way accountable for the crimes which had been committed under the mask of zeal for Episcopacy. Under William the Presbyterian polity was re-established, and the Episcopal clergy had in their turn to suffer many hardships from severe laws and the intolerance of party feeling, though nothing to compare with the bloody persecution under the form of law which had disgraced the reigns of Charles and James.